Diary of a Network Geek

“If you’re reading this, I must already be dead…”

No, I’m not actually dead, something which no doubt has disappointed a number of people, including my ex-wife. However, as a single man with few attachments, it does occur to me that I could go missing for several days before anyone thought to look for me. What’s more, I can think of several people who wouldn’t be too broken up over my untimely demise. Besides my ex-wife, I mean.

So, what to do? We live in a modern age filled with technology and wonder, but also, a few modern problems. If I were to die unexpectedly, there are certain bits of information that it might be nice to pass on to the right folks. Things like security passwords and bank access information and the like. You know, all those clever logins and sign ons and “super sekret” passwords that we all have accumulating like so much karmic sedimentary rock in our oh, so very modern lives. These aren’t things I want just anyone to have, nor do I necessarily want anyone to have them just yet. For that matter, there may be things I want gone, too. Files that would be better deleted than passed on to scar loved ones and that sort of thing. So, again, what to do?

Well, someone has started a service called Death Switch. This is a service that gives you a login to an automated system which prompts you for a password on a regular schedule. If you don’t enter the password on schedule, it sends several addition, emergency-level queries to you and, if those go unanswered, fires off e-mail to the recipient of your choice. If you pay for an account, you can attach files and send the e-mail to multiple recipients.
Naturally, being the cheapskate that I am, I searched around a bit for other services. I mean, if I’m loose with what little money I have left, I won’t have much to leave behind, outside of a brilliant library and a fascinating personal journal. (Remember, kids, the juiciest bits of my life don’t really make it into this blog!) Well, what I found was another, free, service calling itself Dead Man’s Switch. Naturally, the service is somewhat more limited, but, again, it’s free. Oh, and I would assume that the level of security is somewhat less, too. Hey, you get what you pay for.

The only thing is, neither of these address the problem of files on a hard drive. Well, I have an answer for that, too. Now, this option is a little more “do-it-yourself” as it’s no longer supported by the author, but it does have the bonus of running right on your computer. Well, your Windows computer. Sorry, this is a Windows-only solution. The bit of freeware is called, not surprisingly, Dead Man’s Switch, though it was most often referred to as “DMS“. You can still download it for free from PC World, though and install it. I used it for quite some time when I was working someplace I didn’t trust. You see, this little doosie can be set to encrypt files, too. So, for instance, if you’re not dead, but you’ve been suddenly let go from a consulting gig, you can set this to run on your workstation and encrypt your files which you were forced to leave behind. Oh, sure, it may not be ethical, but, well, at least you know it can be done.

So, rest easy now, dear readers, and know that I can e-mail postings to this blog should the unthinkable happen. Hell, for all you know, it may have happened already and these posts are all just a sendmail shell script. With the Network Geek, almost anything is possible.
See you on the other side!

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction."
   --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Yeah, more news, because this is a big deal.

So, this new Kindle is a really big deal. First of all, the latest version looks a lot better than the first one. The first Kindle looked like a prototype, but this version looks really slick. And, yes, there is a much nicer case available for it than there was for the first edition, according to Crunch Gear. From the pictures, it looks like they’re going to have an aftermarket booklight, too. Houston’s own Dwight Silverman has gotten his Kindle2 already and done a review, though I suspect he got his faster than the rest of us because, well, he’s a newspaper guy doing a review.

But, with any big deal, there’s always some kind of problem, right?
According to this article on the Wall Street Journal, the Author’s Guild is protesting the Kindle’s ability to read aloud to you. They claim that this violates an “audio copyright” that every written work includes. Naturally, the contention is that a machine-read, machine-stored work read in a machine-generated synthetic voice is not what is intended by that copyright. I tend to agree. If this were a computer reading website text, would there be a copyright violation? I don’t think so.
Still, it will be interesting to see how this works out.

I read an article the other day about how news is very soon not going to be free. The article claims that newspapers are losing too much money from the free news on their websites and are going to have to start charging very soon. If that happens, I really think I may just buy a Kindle, one of those fancy covers, and subscribe to a couple of papers that way. I mean, I really see the Kindle as an adjunct to print media, not a replacement for printed material. So, I don’t see myself no buying actual books any more.

Either way, I suspect that I’ll have quite a wait based on how long the delay is in getting one. Even if I were totally ready to buy, which I’m not quite, it’d probably be months before I could actually lay hands on the Kindle2, since I’m not a reporter doing a review. But, I do have to admit, this version is a lot more attractive than the last version!

UPDATE: I totally forgot to add the fact that there is now an iPhone app that lets you read Kindle-format books on your iPhone, too.  It sounds like it’s meant to be an addition to your Kindle, but they claim you can use it instead of a Kindle, so who knows.  I wonder how long it will be before they have a similar application for the Blackberry.  Now that would be something, wouldn’t it?

Uh, the title says it all.

Yeah, this is for all you digital SLR photographers out there. You know white balance can be a big thing. Especially when you’re doing a bunch of shots. So, any way to make it easier for your DSLR to auto-correct white balance is a good thing. Thanks to PhotoJoJo, you can get the white balance lens cap which helps you do just that.

Seriously, I first saw this in a DVD tutorial on lighting techniques at my RitzU classes and I thought it was the slickest thing since sliced bread, but I haven’t been able to find one. Now, that’s been solved. Yea!

JuicemanJunior

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I bought a juicer this weekend.

Specifically, I bought a Juiceman, Jr. It’s probably not the best one there is, but it was cheap, so I figured I didn’t have much to lose.
I’ve been meaning to buy a juicer for a long time. Back when I was just about done with my chemotherapy, I ran into a lot of cancer survivors and they all seemed to have juicers. I lost count of how many times I was asked if I had gotten a juicer yet. I’d meant to, but just never got around to it. Well, after this past week, I decided it was finally time to stop obsessing over getting the “right” one and just get the cheapest one for now. I figured once I had some clue what I was doing and how much I was going to actually use it, then I could decide on a better machine. In the mean time, though, I figured that something was better than nothing.

So, off I went this weekend to Target and I got myself the cheapest juicer they had. At $59.99, it was the Juiceman, Jr. Turns out, this was the machine endorsed by the “Juiceman” himself. That crazy, white-haired guy on the infomercials that started a lot of the most recent juicing craze. Turns out, he was a cancer survivor, too, and credits much of his health and recovery to juicing. Of course, I didn’t know all that when I first read about juicing or juicers. But, I know that I’ll ingest fewer calories with a higher nutritional content via fresh juice. And, since I’m sure I’m not getting my daily recommended servings of fruits and vegetables, I figured this might help with that, too.  All I need to do now is figure out how to “juice” bacon!

Seriously, the bottom line is that I need to improve my overall health and diet. I know dropping a few pounds will help in a lot of ways, but I need to be careful not to let my nutrition levels drop while I try to shed those pounds. Juicing seems like a good way to help make that happen.
We’ll see, I guess, but either way, it’s time I started making more positive changes in my life.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time."
   --Winston Churchill

A Nerf “Tommy gun”?

Okay, this isn’t quite as cool as the Vulcan EBF-25, which was fully automatic, but the Nerf N-Strike Raider CS-35 is a close second. It’s a pump-action gun with a 35 dart drum magazine. Not fully automatic, but, then again, it doesn’t need batteries, either. If you follow the link you’ll get to a page with plenty of pictures and a short video of the Raider in action.

What’s cool is that drum magazine. I’m not sure how they’d do it, based on the mechanisms but rumor has it that the drum magazine from the N-Strike Raider will fit the N-Strike Vulcan. Now that would be cool! Just imagine, not only would you have ten more shots, but no hassle loading up a belt, just snapping in a magazine.

Well, we have a bit of a wait on this. It’s just been announce at a toy convention and I haven’t heard a word on when it will hit the streets.

I know some of my hobbies and obsessions seem rather more costly than is reasonable.

I’ll bet most of my readers thought it was a little crazy to even contemplate bidding on ephemera and, well, junk from the Battlestar Galactica set. I suppose, in a way, it is. And, I would imagine that more than a few people who are drawn in by the gravity well of time and energy I like to call The Diary of a Network Geek would find my semisecret urge to create my own props for my own, internal, unpublished science-fiction world, well, a bit odd, to say the least. Well, for those of you who doubt, I share with you Weta Collectibles: Original Rayguns. Look at them. Look at them closely. Now, look at the prices. There’s money in those rayguns!

Who’s crazy now?

Leave it to crazy kids to beat the system.

No, seriously, high school students have found a way to make those pesky red-light ticket cameras work for them. Or, rather, work against their “enemies”. According to the Montgomery County Sentinel, some enterprising kids have figured out how to print fake license plates that are good enough to fool the cameras. Armed with those, they borrow cars that look like their target’s cars, apply the fake “plate” with their target’s information on it, and speed past the cameras. Bingo! Their target gets hit with the speeding ticket. Do it enough times and, well, it gets to be a problem worthy of the Internet news. (And, yeah, I called them “red-light cameras” instead of “speeding cameras” because that’s how they use them in Texas.)

Clever kids!

Oh, also, after having Thai curry for lunch yesterday, I’m feeling much better. And, I checked on my peanut butter via the toll-free number on the side of the jar. The nice recorded voice assured me that my precious peanut butter was salmonella-free, so I’m all good. Physically, at least.

No, this is not a plea.

Really, I have a giant stack of books to read, so all I need to do is reach randomly into the stack and pull out something miraculous. No, this is to help you, dear reader, pick out something new to read.
As a computer geek, I love anything that programatically generates something new based on previous information. Markov Chains, for instance, are fascinating to me, even if I barely understand them. So, when I saw this website, What should I read next?, I had to share it with you. To use it, go, enter the last good book you read and its author, then clikc the big button. In a few seconds, the page will refresh with a link to what it thinks you meant, which will hopefully be the book you had in mind. Then, click on that link and you’ll be taken to a list of suggestions for what you should read next.

I’m not sure I entirely trust it, though, since when I used Choke by Chuck Palahnuik, it returned a bunch of Photoshop books. Still, it’s a fun way to get shoved out of your little reading rut! So, go ahead and try it!

You knew someone was going to do this, right?

Okay, given my obsession with the ultimate Nerf weapon, the Vulcan EBF-25, I’m sure many of my readers thought I would be the first person to make super modifications to it. I’m proud to say that I am not. I may be a geek, but I’m not that big of a geek! Those guys are here: Nerf Chaingun Modifications.

Basically, these guys made the EBF-25 four times more awesome by adding a better battery pack and a cooler paint job. The paint job is, I think, self-explanatory. The battery pack, however, is what makes it a chaingun. The bigger, better batteries give the motor which drives the belt more power, which means this already incredible weapon can fire up to four times faster.
I think I may start counting the days until it’s warm enough to paint in my garage again…

No, I don’t have a dog that needs to be rescued.

In fact, my precious Hilda is rescue dog. Though, all I think I really rescued her from was being spoiled by someone else. She’s so sweet that I’m sure someone would have snatched her up if we hadn’t. But, there are lots of dogs who need to be adopted. Some are, however, more problematic than others. At H.O.P.E., the rescue where I’m a member, we have lots of foster dogs of all kinds. But, even we have special needs dogs, in particular breeds that have been systematically mistreated or that have particularly rough backgrounds and need extra care and attention. Still, the dedicated volunteers do find homes for them, even if they have to go to very special owners.

Some dogs, though, have even more special needs than that. Do you remember Michael Vick? He was that first-round draft pick from the NFL that started an illegal dog breeding and fighting camp. I hesitate to call it that, but I’m not sure what else to call a rough collection of shacks out in the woods where he abused dogs for his own amusement and the entertainment of his friends. He was, thankfully, convicted and sent to jail. He was also forced to pay restitution which went toward the care and rehabilitation of the dogs. Did you ever wonder what happened to those dogs? Well, Sports Illustrated has the story of what happened to Michael Vick’s dogs.

It’s a pretty powerful story, but it ends pretty well, I think.
Oh, and if you read this all the way through and aren’t moved in some way, aren’t touched by the results? Then, I think you have no soul and I cannot possibly love you or even fully trust you. I’m sure that won’t be a problem for the vast majority of my readers, but, well, I’m just saying.

One last thing. Be safe tonight, ringing in the new year. Be careful and watch out for all those people who won’t be. If you haven’t come up with a New Year’s Resolution yet, there’s still time to hit my New Year’s Resolution Generator and let it do the picking for you.
Hope your new year starts off safe and wonderful!

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
   --Martin Luther King